


Paradise Regained

by Gatac, Punkey



Series: Rebuilt [2]
Category: Bionic Woman (2007)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:42:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22306633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gatac/pseuds/Gatac, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punkey/pseuds/Punkey
Summary: The cracks start to show as Jaime struggles with being an augment. Meanwhile, Berkut investigates the death of a whole town and uncovers something monstrous.Rebuilt aims to rewrite the 2007 series from the ground up to be both more character-driven and feature a stronger overarching plot. Mixing in elements of military fiction and spy-fi, Rebuild will appeal to readers who are interested in the technology, tradecraft and transhumanist themes that are part of the setting.
Series: Rebuilt [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/135396
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

Could it be? Could we be back? Indeed we are, and we're kicking off our return by continuing our rewrite of the original stories. Look forward to that and Shadows actually coming soon.

* * *

This late at night, the only sounds competing for attention in the gas attendant's shack at Paradise Station were the rattle of the old window-mounted AC unit and the TV in the corner. John Murphy sat in the opposite corner behind the counter, feet propped up as he watched the latest episode of Survivor.

"Get it!" Murphy shouted, pumping his arm. "Get over it!" He groaned as the figure on the TV rolled off the log and fell into the muddy water below. "Goddamnit." A swig from his beer was interrupted by the squealing of truck brakes outside, and then by a plume of gray smoke wafting out from behind the cab of the semi-truck pulling into the station. "That's gonna be expensive," Murphy muttered as he swung his feet off the counter and walked towards the door.

There was nothing quite as bright in town as the truck's headlights, so Murphy raised his hand to block the light, guessing at the shape of the driver climbing out from the cab.

"Yeah, I'm here," the driver said. As he walked around the front of the truck, Murphy could make out an arm raised to the man's head - talking on a cell phone. "Call you right back," the driver said, then stepped out of the cone of the headlight and gave Murphy a nod. "Evenin'," the driver said. He was a tall one, with a thin nose and light brown hair barely peeking out from under his baseball cap. What the hell he was wearing that for in the middle of the night, Murphy couldn't tell.

"Evenin'," Murphy echoed back. "Looks like you've got one hell of a problem there. Judging by the color of the smoke, could be an oil leak. Service's closed for the night, but I'll let you park it by the side and we can take a look at it in the morning."

"Uh huh," the driver said. He checked his watch, eyed his phone and craned his neck to look at the sky, all without quite looking at Murphy.

The smoke drifted through the service station, enveloping Murphy in a blueish-grey mist. It smelled metallic, and tickled his throat. "Jesus, that's a thick smoke," he said, coughing and waving it away from his face. "That metal smell, could be bottom end damage. If that's the case, you'd better call your carrier and let them know you need a tow, that's more than we can handle."

"Right," the driver said. The smoke didn't seem to bother him even as it kept pouring out of the truck. Finally, he seemed to notice Murphy and looked at him. "You think the wind's gonna pick up tonight?"

"This time of year, probably not," Murphy replied. "Why do you ask?"

The driver smiled at him and raised his cell phone again. "Yeah, we're all set," he said. "Roll in the package." He hung up and gave Murphy another smile. "Thanks," he said.

"I'll get on the phone to Jim, we'll need his tow truck to move this," Murphy said, and walked back into the booth. He felt the driver's eyes on his back the whole way, and when he turned to look, the driver still had his eyes fixed on him. He was still smiling, too.

Murphy closed and locked the door behind him before picking up the phone - something about this stranger set the hairs on the back of his neck on end. It only took a single ring before Jim picked up his cell phone, so he must have already been awake.

"Hey Jim, we got a broken down semi here that needs moving out of the pumps," Murphy started.

"Did that plane get to you yet?" Jim asked. "Blew right overhead the north end of town flying down the highway, woke me up. Looked like some kind of crop duster."

Murphy looked northbound on the highway outside his gas station. Nothing overhead, but he could hear it getting closer. "No, not here yet."

"Looked like it was spraying something too, someone's gonna catch hell if we got dusted by some bullshit pesticide," Jim said, then started to cough. "You smell that? Smells like garlic."

"No, I don't," Murphy said as Jim's cough started to worsen. "You all right there, Jim?"

"Damn -" Jim was interrupted by a coughing fit that started to turn into wheezing. The plane was clearly audible by this point, almost overhead. "Damn pesticide -" His breath started becoming more labored as the wheezing grew louder and the plane .

"Sounds like you got a lungful," Murphy said, turning off the air conditioner as the plane blasted overhead. "I'm gonna call an ambulance, see if they can get to you." Murphy looked up, trying to catch sight of the plane. It was obviously some kind of duster, spraying something over the air. When he turned his attention back to the phone call, all he could hear was a slight wheeze on the other end of the line. "Jim? Jim, you there?"

"...help," was all Jim could push out of his lungs before his wheezing stopped entirely.

"Jim?" Murphy asked. "Jim, you there?" Silence. "Shit," he said, and banged on the glass. "Hey, stranger! You want to get inside, whatever that shit is, it's toxic!"

The stranger just looked up as the mist settled over the gas pumps, checked his watch, then kept staring at Murphy.

"I just got off the phone with my friend at the north end of town and he sounded pretty bad!" Murphy shouted through the glass before reaching back for the phone. "I'm gonna call for help!" He picked the handset back up, but this time all he got was three short beeps and a computer voice apologizing for the service being down. "What the hell?" Murphy fished in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone - even out here he usually got some signal, but not anymore. He looked back out the window as droplets of fine mist had settled over everything, including the man, who was still on his cell phone. "Hey, stranger! My phone's dead, call for help!"

The man's words were muffled through the glass; all Murphy could make out was "not able to penetrate" and "need to re-evaluate dispersal".

"Hey! Can you hear me?" Murphy shouted back.

The man paused and asked something about "test concluded", then reached into his jacket - but when his hand came back out, it wasn't a cell phone in it, but a pistol.

Murphy ducked down, squeezing himself against the floor as bullets first shattered the glass of the shack onto him, then ripped holes through the thin walls. Murphy waited for the shooting to stop, then flicked his left arm out, flinging glass shards off him. The driver's boots gave a soft squeak outside as they trod over the dry asphalt, while a sharp smell of garlic drifted inside. Jim had told him about that, hadn't he? Murphy listened, but the footsteps outside were soon drowned out by his own breathing as he started to wheeze and cough. He sounded like Jim did, breaths getting faster and shallower. His hands were shaking, too. He reached up, up to the counter. He had just enough strength to grasp the shotgun clamped underneath and pull it towards himself.

Murphy's eyesight dimmed as he tried to push off the floor, but his legs didn't work. He turned and twisted, working his back against the wall, trying to prop himself up on the counter. More gunshots ripped holes in the shack, but he couldn't dodge or even flinch anymore. He drew his last breath, one final wheeze, and then his lungs refused to work at all. Murphy's sight started to go grey and black around the edges as the stranger kicked the door in, but he could still move his fingers. He barely heard the shotgun go off in his hands, the recoil kicking the sawed-off double barrel from his hands. His vision narrowed to a tunnel as the driver fell over, his white shirt turned dark red. The stranger twitched a few times then was still, just as Murphy did the same.

* * *

It was 5:54 AM in San Francisco and Jaime Sommers was awake. She was still lying in bed, though, for two reasons: one, her sister Becca was asleep face down in bed next to her, and two, she was too busy thinking about how much trouble she was in. Will and she had been run off the road and shot at by a…'bionic' killer, some half-robot weapon in the guise of a woman. Those same bionic parts were in her now. And Becca was in just as much danger, only she could never know about any of this. Jaime would have to do everything she could to pretend nothing had changed. She had to explain everything away, somehow, had to keep up the appearance of normalcy. So get up at 6, it's a school day, get showered while Becca wakes up, fix breakfast while Becca showers, drive her to school, then - what then?

Jaime swung her legs out of bed and sat at the edge for a bit. She was facing the bedroom window now, not much of a view even when the curtains were open. The sun was barely up outside. Her body felt rested, somehow, but her head was a different story. She put her hands on the mattress, gripped it and took a deep breath. Get up, she told herself. Get up, get going, figure it out. She pushed herself up and got to her feet with barely any effort, then kept standing for a moment. The floor felt weird under her feet. 'Her' feet. She looked down on herself, flexed 'her' right arm. It all looked so ordinary.

Becca grumbled from the bed behind her. Jaime distantly remembered Becca being a light sleeper when they had to share hotel rooms on trips with their parents, and apparently that hadn't changed. "Jaime?" Becca asked through her pillow.

Jaime turned around. "Hey," she said softly, signing a more proper _Good morning_ when Becca turned to look at her. For a moment, she just stood there, unsure what to do next.

_What happened last night?_ Becca signed as she yawned.

Jaime stood still for another moment. _I came back home_ , she signed, finally. "I came back home," she repeated out loud, for her own benefit. _I couldn't leave you alone here_ , she added.

Becca sat upright, cross-legged on her bed. "Where did you go?"

"Will's place," Jaime said.

"Like earlier, when you got in an accident and didn't call me and came home weird and then collapsed and started crying?" Becca scooted closer. "Jaime, what's going on?"

Jaime looked away briefly and took a deep breath. "There's a lot going on," she said. "Tell you over breakfast?"

Becca sighed. "Tell me everything? Promise?"

"I promise," Jaime said. With her left hand raised flat up to her throat, she grimaced and pushed across her throat. _Lie_.

Becca opened her mouth to reply, then just stared at Jaime.

"Let's make breakfast, okay?" Jaime said, turning around and walking into the kitchen.

Becca sat on the bed, just a moment, then scooted off, bent down to grab yesterday's t-shirt from the floor and pulled it over her head. As she walked into the kitchen, her big sister was already getting out the bowls and preparing to pour cereal. Becca pulled out a chair and sat down, hooking her feet behind the chair's front legs. The tiled floor was far too cold for her bare feet. Jaime put a bowl of cereal in front of her, then sat down, too. Her bowl was still on the kitchen counter.

"So," Jaime said. "Everything." She took a deep breath. "Just...let me finish, so you know the whole story, okay?"

Becca looked at Jaime for a moment, then nodded.

Jaime thought for a moment, then it came pouring out of her. "I didn't just go to dinner with Will. I was also at a job interview. Will recommended me to his boss as a research assistant and, well, it looks like I got the job, I'm just waiting for the paperwork to make it official. So...there are going to be some changes. I know it's longer hours, but the pay is more than twice what I'm pulling in at the bar. I couldn't say no to that. I mean, I could hardly believe it in the first place." Jaime paused. "So between that and the accident, I was really...I'm sorry. I didn't want to worry you but I was just a big mess."

"But...you collapsed," Becca said. "You had, like, a seizure, and you were acting...really weird before then, saying some really hurtful things."

Jaime gulped. "I didn't want to worry you," she repeated. "But" - she sighed - "everything. So, the reason for all that was that I had a concussion from the accident." Noting that Becca was sucking in air to interrupt, Jaime signed _Lie_ again and pressed on. "No, it gets worse. A significant concussion. I don't even remember what happened right after the accident. Will says I was conscious, but I don't remember what happened then until we were in the hospital. They told me they would have to keep me there, and I...I flipped out. I told them they couldn't keep me, that I had to go take care of my sister." Becca narrowed her eyes and again started to interrupt before Jaime cut her off. "It's...it's just what happened, Becca. Everyone said that was a bad idea, but I browbeat Will into talking to the doctors, and - I don't know how - he got them to let me sign out. He drove me here and then, well, you saw what happened. I told Will that there was no way I was going back to a hospital, so he took me to his place and he tried to help me there, but he...he had to go back to work, so after he checked me out and made me promise to take it easy and to call 911 if things got worse again, he called me a ride and sent me home." After the flood of words, her breaths were heavy and her eyes shimmered with wetness. "I'm sorry," she said. "I...I shouldn't have made you worry. I didn't want to...I thought it would be better if I spared you, but…"

"...but you wanted me to know the truth," Becca intoned, mirroring Jaime's deliberate speech.

"I needed you to know the truth," Jaime said. Again she raised her left hand to her throat and slid it across. _Lie._ "I...I hope that's enough for now."

"If you think that's enough…" Becca said.

"I'm sure there'll be more," Jaime said. "As we...figure this out. Right now I just want you to know that I'm all right and I hope we're all right." She met Becca's eyes. "...are we?"

"Well, I mean, what about your new boss, what's his name?" Becca asked, tracing a line on the counter with her finger. "What does he do, where does he work, what's his background? If you're gonna work for a guy I'd like to know who he is."

Jaime hesitated. "His name is Jonas Bledsoe and I swear I'll remember the company name once the paperwork gets here," she said, putting on a fake smile for a fake barb. "I don't know too much about him personally, but the company does research into alternative energy and medical science. They get DoD funding, though, so I can't be more specific than that. It's all very...classified, I'm told."

"Well, I'll just have to do some digging of my own, then -" Becca said.

Jaime snapped her left hand against her chest and tapped her index and middle finger against her thumb. _No!_ She shook her head for emphasis. "I'll get you a brochure," she said, " **if** you turn in your English essay on time."

Becca stuck her tongue out. "Fine."

"I'm serious!" Jaime said. "Rebecca Louise Sommers, this is my serious face. I don't want to see you wrenching on that robot until that essay is done. It's 10% of your grade!"

"Good thing it's already done," Becca said, nodding towards her backpack by the front door.

"...I should proof-read it," Jaime said.

"I do need someone telling me if it's 'to who' or 'to whom'," Becca replied with a smirk.

"Hey, I used to charge thirty bucks an hour at the Berkeley library," Jaime said. "You're getting a deal here, young lady."

Becca's smirk widened into a smile. "I know. Thanks, Jaime."

Jaime smiled back. "Always," she said, then got up to get Becca's essay printout from her backpack.

With her sister's back turned, Becca pulled her personal notebook to her from across the counter. She flipped it open and scribbled down a quick note - _Jonas Bledsoe, look into this_ \- _Jaime signing left hand, why?_ \- then flipped it closed again. All Jaime saw when she turned around was Becca giving her a smile once more.

* * *

The action of the previous day was clear on the faces of Berkut's senior staff. Bledsoe had intended to give everyone the day off, but when the Department of Defense dropped a mass casualty field report in his email inbox that started with "142 dead" and ended with "vector, cause, and parties unknown", he had to call everyone in and just hope caffeine would be a good replacement for rest. Will Anthros looked like he had the worst of it, being dragged from his hotel that he only made it into a few hours previously, and so far the coffee in his mug hadn't helped with that at all.

The doors opened to let Jonas Bledsoe through. Before the door even closed again, he dropped a pile of still-warm printouts on the table and started sliding them across, one briefing packet for each of them.

"You're kidding, right?" Nathan piped up, first to finish scanning the summary. "The whole town?"

"Days like these, I wish I had a sense of humor," Bledsoe said. "But no, this is real. We're looking at an unknown chemical-like WMD released on American soil. Wiped an entire town off the map in minutes. Keep reading."

"Excuse me, **Sir** ," Will began. "Is there any particular reason why -"

Bledsoe glared at Will. "Keep. Reading."

Several seconds passed in silence as Will joined the rest of the table in processing the field report. The casualties were the headline, the DoD, FBI, and DHS's utter lack of any clue who was responsible and how they did it the lede, but the real meat was two pages back with a freeze frame of a man standing in a gas station labeled Subject 1.

"So, like I was saying, that's terrible and all, but we're not the FBI," Will said. "Or DHS. Or even Army Chemical rapid response. So...why is this our problem?"

"Because of Subject 1," Bledsoe said.

He reached for a nearby wireless keyboard, dimming the lights in the room and bringing the screen in the back down. With the soft whirr of the projector's fans overhead, a stopped image from a high-angle surveillance camera appeared on the screen. Another keystroke and the video played, showing a man standing in the middle of a white haze hugging the ground, then taking out a gun, getting into a brief exchange of fire with someone at the gas station booth and finally getting shot down. Bledsoe stopped the video there.

"Subject 1 does not appear in any state or federal databases, there are no individuals matching his description in any recent intel and chatter is quiet on a big WMD attack, and considering the CIA, DIA and DHS have been fully on this for 6 hours now, they've shaken all the usual trees," Bledsoe said. "But that's not why this document is our problem, Dr. Anthros. Do you see any CRBN protective gear on Subject 1?" Bledsoe rewound the video to stop on the man, arm outstretched, aiming a pistol at something off screen.

"...no," Will said.

"Assuming this is a chemical attack, do you think atropine can do that?" Bledsoe asked.

"No, you would...have to dial it in for the exposure," Will said. "I mean, you can pre-dose, but only so much - and with the exposure needed to kill everyone else this quickly -"

"You'd go into tachycardia and die," Bledsoe finished for Will. "I see we've read the same training manuals, then. USAMRICD is looking into their records, but their entire department - whose job it is to come up with ways to resist chemical attack - has no idea what this is."

Bledsoe tossed the remote back onto the table in front of him. "That is why this is our problem. DoD took one look at it and fired it into my inbox asking for us to figure it out. So, what is it? Ideas?"

"Perhaps the vector wasn't chemical," Pope weighed in. "I'm not aware of any nerve agents that penetrate this quickly into closed structures. We should see more panic and attempted countermeasures from the victims inside their homes. People trying to flee. As is, this seems to have surprised and overwhelmed them very quickly. If we had a weapon like that, I would know it; if our enemies had weapons like that, SecDef would have already sent us to destroy them."

"It's...it's impossible," Will added. "The field autopsies all show classic symptoms of nerve gas exposure, the full acronym, but there's nothing like a vaccination for cholinesterase inhibitors, and, like I already said, the countermeasures can kill you by themselves if you're not already exposed to nerve gas. There's no organophosphate residue above background for a backwater like that, and enough nerve agent to wipe out an area this large would look like someone dumped a tanker of the stuff over the town. This is impossible."

"Well, it's obviously not," Truewell asked. She looked around the table as Bledsoe nodded in approval. "This isn't helpful, guys. We literally work in impossible every day. Stop saying what it isn't, but what it is."

A bit of silence descended on the table for a moment.

"Something this man didn't fear," Jae Kim said. "He stands right in the open as the cloud descends. He would have received near-maximal exposure. Yet he does not seem nervous. Look how he stands. He does not even turn to look at where the cloud is coming from. He knew this was coming. And he was either absolutely certain of his mission - or absolutely certain that the weapon couldn't harm him."

At just about that point, Will finished scanning the last page of the brief and flicked the package back towards Bledsoe. "Well, it's not any of the classics, unless the FBI lab messed this up," he said. "I give them credit for working fast in a field lab, but this report is a mess."

"What do you mean?" Bledsoe asked.

"Unless this town mines a lot of transition metals, there's a hell of a lot of contamination," Will said.

"What about this DMSO stuff on the chart?" Nathan asked. "There's a lot of that."

"Dimethyl sulfoxide," Will said, pinching his nose. "It's a common solvent, it doesn't make any sense for organophosphate testing, but they probably just used it to dissolve the sample for the test, which would be where their contamination issues came from, it picks up transition metal salts -"

"Would you use it with water?" Truewell asked, pointing to the relevant part of the FBI's test results. "There's water in their results, too."

"...no," Will said, grabbing his packet again and flipping through it. "No, you wouldn't."

"So, what do you think, Anthros?" Bledsoe asked. "Does this merit your interest now?"

Will scanned the packet for a few more seconds before looking up. "How soon can we be in Paradise?"

"Plane is waiting on the tarmac now," Bledsoe replied. "What are you thinking?"

"This dust sample," Will said, slapping his packet down on the table and pointing to another clipped-out spreadsheet. "It's all transition metals, elemental carbon, with just a hint of phosphate, enough to look like just fertilizer residue. It could be a novel nerve agent with the carbon and phosphate, but these metals...these are the same oxidation states I used for the anthrocytes. I think this might be nanotech."

"Which is definitely our problem to solve, then," Bledsoe said. "You and Truewell are the closest we get to experts on biological or chemical weapons analysis, so you'll both be going."

"What about Mrs. Sommers?" Truewell asked. "If we're not available for her -"

"We'll figure something out," Bledsoe replied. "The less we need to involve her in this, the better."

"Sir," Pope said, "can we afford to sideline our most powerful asset?"

"Damn right we can," Will said. "Jaime's been through enough already."

"And that's too bad, but not germane to my decision," Bledsoe said. "Right now there's nothing useful for her to contribute to this mission. If this changes going forward, I'll reevaluate. For now, Anthros and Truewell are up. Ambrose, Kim, you handle the onboarding. Make sure she quals as soon as possible. Pope...keep yourself available." He looked around the room. "That is all. Dismissed."

* * *

Sara Corvus awoke with a start, reflexes jerking her out of the bath of ice cubes and meltwater she was laying in. Her eyes told her the water was 33 degrees. The ice was losing its fight against her anthrocytes, but that was okay. She eased herself back down into the water, her motions slowed as she willed her stiff joints and muscles to move, her hands locked into curled shape after the action of the previous night. She settled back down until just her nose and mouth were above the surface, and felt her fingers loosen up joint by joint.

There was a knock at the door. "I heard you wake up," a thickly-accented voice said on the other side. It would have been muffled - _should_ have been muffled - but it wasn't to Sara.

"I'm fine, Nick," Sara said. She stared at the ceiling, counting the small fractures in the plaster while Nicholas thought of what to say next.

"Will you need much longer?" Nicholas asked. "We did not debrief after last night." Another pause. "Take your time, of course."

"I'm not going anywhere just yet," Sara said. "And if you're gonna be standing there all day, you might as well ask your questions."

"Yes then," Nicholas said. Sara didn't have to open her eyes to picture Nicholas nervously picking at his sleeves as they stretched and shifted over his oversized arms. "What happened? You only said that they augmented Jaime Sommers and that you failed again before you went in the tub and fell asleep."

Her eyes told Sara that it had been nine hours in the tub. The moment Sommers dove out that window, she should have forgotten the rifle and bailed out. Didn't need the German to tell her that. "That's what happened," Sara said. "I took the shot. Couldn't punch through the glass. Berkut armored the bastard's apartment. After that, Sommers came after me. Kicked a sofa through the door and leapt out the penthouse window. Thought she would freeze, not cover four blocks in under two minutes. When she got to me...it wasn't Sommers. They used Tin Man on her."

"That is what you meant with, she is Berkut now," Nicholas said.

"I can take her," Sara said. "Tin Man's not very smart. She just got the jump on me. We can work around it."

"No, Sara," Nicholas said. "I know you feel badly about her -"

"Feel bad," Sara corrected.

"Feel bad about her," Nicholas continued, "but you were right. She is Berkut now. She will betray us, even if she does not mean to. She is going to always be a threat. You know how we must treat her."

If the heat flushing Sara's face had been real, a few ice cubes would have just melted. "Maybe try having whatever pump you use for a heart beat once or twice," she snapped back, sliding up out of the water. Nicholas went silent, but Sara could hear the floorboards squeal in pain as he shifted his weight. "Sorry. That was...I'm sorry."

"I understand you feel... **bad** over Sommers," Nicholas said. "But we must proceed with the mission. You understand that."

"Yeah," Sara said, sliding back down into the freezing cold bath of ice. "I understand."

Sara slid all the way down underwater to signal her departure from the conversation. She held her breath and waited for the anthrocytes to finish their job. Nicholas stayed by the door for ten or fifteen minutes more, then Sara heard him wander off. _A threat_ , Sara thought, watching a bubble drift up from her nose. _And she has to be addressed._ She closed her eyes, and waited.

* * *

_Commentary: Why Rewrite?_

Robert: Heyo, welcome to more commentary and - above all - welcome back to our effort to rewrite the earlier stories in the Rebuilt-verse. Though you might not guess it from our radio silence, this story hasn't been far from our minds in the meantime, and while other things took precedence, we're now in position to get the ball rolling again. So the natural question is: why rewrite?

Well, in short, our rewrite of the pilot ended up changing events quite a bit. So everything happening after that would naturally have to change. And in the process of going over the immediate follow-up story, we discovered that there was a lot to adjust - and, surprising at least myself - a lot of stuff that was in turn already superceded by later developments. All that and the story's own problems led us to the decision to rewrite it.

Kasey: There was a good amount of the original Paradise that was decent plot-wise, but had uneven writing, and Jaime's section was unfocused and suffered badly from "she needs to do _something_ ". Also, the clear bright line of "Jaime is not okay with what is happening" hadn't been established, so she still swung back and forth between hating what Berkut had done and just going along with it.

Robert: I suspect we'll have more to say about Berkut as the story continues. But yeah, having a more consistent throughline for Jaime's character was big. In the original version, this is where trying to stick with what the TV series did really bit me in the ass. I wanted to do more with Will, and also give more weight to the attack on Paradise. I maintain those were good ideas, but they came at the cost of sidelining Jaime for much of the earlier parts. (Not that I think the episode did much with Jaime actually in Paradise other than punching the bad guys, but hey.) That's definitely something to fix here! Bonus points, we can spend Jaime's onboarding at Berkut on, you know, explaining some stuff and getting her to meet people, rather than boring you all to death with firearms minutia. I'll admit, it's a sacrifice for me? But I'm gonna pay that price, for you guys.

Kasey: You're welcome. Really, the point of the rewrite for both the pilot and this was to take the character stuff that got shoved into Big Sister after we actually sat down and plotted out what the characters should be, what the story should be, and the arc of everything, and start doing that work where it should have been done in the first place. We started the work in the pilot, and it continues into here. Not only for Jaime, but for the whole main cast. Sara and Nicholas were shorted badly in the original Paradise as well, and Becca's plot practically didn't exist. Also, the last vestiges of "TV show Will" were still in there, and they definitely gotta go.

Robert: For sure. So, the other big question: why are we still on this, years later? Well, despite everything that got this pushed down the schedule, we're still excited about this and we want to make it right. Also, speaking for myself, I'm kind of a stubborn bastard. Yeah, I'll whine and kvetch - Kasey knows - but I can't just let stuff like this go.

Kasey: We're not done. Pretty simple. Got more story.


	2. Chapter 2

Car rides usually went by in silence for the Sommers sisters; Jaime couldn't sign or turn her face towards Becca, after all. If there was something to be said, it had to wait until the car stopped, like it did when Jaime pulled in front of Madison High School.

"I'll pick you up at five, okay?" Jaime said.  
"Yeah," Becca said. "Sure."  
 _I love you,_ Jaime signed. _I'll be okay. I promise.  
_ Becca smiled. "Love you, too," she said. Then she turned and left, the passenger door snapping closed behind her.

Jaime watched her little sister go, all the way to the building. Most days she didn't linger, but…

" _Sommers, do you copy?"_ someone sitting right next to her said. Jaime wrenched her head around, scanning the back seat, but saw nobody else in the car with her. " _Sommers, this is Berkut Operations,"_ the voice continued. " _I'm transmitting through your ear implant. Just say 'yes' if you can hear me."  
_ "...yes?" Jaime tentatively answered.  
" _Cool,"_ the voice of Operations said. " _Oh, I'm Nathan, by the way. So, you ready to come in for the day or do you have anything else to take care of?"  
_ "No, I'm good," Jaime replied. "But...how do I get to Wolf Creek? I was unconscious for the other times I went there."  
" _Oh, yeah,"_ Nathan said. " _You're gonna want to head north on the 1 up through Muir Beach and...actually, let me try something. Just a sec."_ Two seconds later, a green line appeared painted into Jaime's vision, floating gently over the street ahead.  
"Whoa!" Jaime shouted. "Hey, what did you just do?"  
" _Set a waypoint,"_ Nathan said. " _Telemetry has your current location down to within 10 feet, I restricted the navigation to surface streets and bam, perfect route. Not to brag but I figure that's gonna be in everyone's glasses in ten years. It's called augmented reality. Pretty cool, huh?"  
_ "Well, right now it's in my head and I didn't ask for it," Jaime said.  
" _Yeah, I guess,"_ Nathan said. " _Still, it works. Pret-ty cool. Yeah?"  
_ "No, it's an invasion into my own head," Jaime snapped back. "Turn it off and ask next time."  
" _Gotcha, paper maps mode,"_ Nathan said. After another second, the green line cleared from her vision. " _Like I said, take the 1 northbound, and uh, when you get through Muir Beach, just say 'Operations'. I have a keyword alert, that'll ping me to start listening in, I'll talk you through the rest. Got that?"  
_ "Well, at least you're not always listening," Jaime said.  
" _Yeah, about that,"_ Nathan said. " _You're still stopped, I can give it to you straight and not have you swerve into traffic, right?"  
_ "Yeah," Jaime said.  
" _I might not always be listening, but the system is,"_ Nathan said. " _Records everything. Transmits it to us, usually live as long as you're anywhere with cell reception. That's how it can react when you say 'Operations' and...you know, a few other CARNIVORE keywords that might indicate you're in an interesting kind of situation, gun, bomb, that sort of thing. It's, uh, I get that it's a privacy nightmare but it's orders from up top. You're...kind of a big deal. Bledsoe does_ _ **not**_ _want to lose you."  
_ Jaime closed her eyes and took a deep breath, her hands clenched on the wheel. "It's...okay," she said. "It's not your decision, and...thank you for doing what you can. But still, **ask** next time. Got it?"  
" _Got it,"_ Nathan said. " _I mean, I get it. It's not...cool, but it's better than no one listening in at all."_ He paused. " _Anyway. You should get going. I can stick around to answer questions if you got 'em, otherwise I'll leave you to it until you call in. Sound good?"  
_ "Sounds good," Jaime said. "See you in a couple of hours."

* * *

Just about two miles west of Paradise, a roadside gas station had become very busy in the earliest hours of morning. Plenty of cars and SUVs, all black with tinted windows, none of them here for gas or snacks. About half of the people now swarming the area were dressed in some sort of business suit, the other half in fatigues with big "FBI" stencils on the back of their load-bearing vests. Though some tents had already been erected and the road blocked off, the site had a long way to go to becoming a proper checkpoint. Most of the work was being done out of the back of vans and pickup trucks as agents scrambled to erect temporary shelters, the only generators powered up were supporting the decontamination tent, and nobody had gotten around to wetting up the dirt to keep the site from turning into a dust bowl. When the latest arrival - a small helicopter - got to within a hundred feet above the ground, the sand went flying around the landing site. Quickly, the brownout grew into a veritable cloud, swallowing the machine on its final approach, and by the time the desert wind got around to blowing that cloud away, the helo was already on the ground, spooling down its engines to idle and letting the rotor settle.

Will Anthros watched where the wind blew from inside - the dust from the helicopter blew away from the FBI encampment and away from the town. It seemed they were upwind of the hot zone here. At least one less thing to worry about.

"Good to go!" the pilot shouted over his shoulder. "Keep your heads down!"

Truewell nodded and hopped out of her side of the helicopter, slinging her overnight bag onto her shoulder and grabbing one of Will's "supplies" cases with her free hand. Will was several seconds behind her, first having to work the strap of his bag over his head and across his chest, then hefting two sturdy pelican cases with his lab equipment out from under the seat benches of the helicopter.

"Are you sure you don't want help?" Truewell shouted as the helicopter continued to spin down.

Will turned to shout back at her, then remembered the cabin door, turned back to the helicopter, set down a case and struggled the door closed. Ducking and grabbing the case again, he hoofed it through the dust. When he came up to her, he turned away again and spat some grit onto the ground. "Fine," he coughed. "I got it." He straightened up and looked back at the helicopter one more time. "I got it."

Truewell knew better than to argue with Will Anthros when his mind was made up. Instead of dealing with that, she just turned around and kept walking towards the edge of the helipad, where three FBI agents in suits were running to meet them. "Ruth Truewell!" she shouted. "We're the DARPA team you were notified about!"  
"Ben Tarzi!" answered one of the agents, a thin brown-skinned man with a shaved head. "Welcome to Paradise, Dr. Truewell!" He looked past her to Will, who was struggling to keep up. "And this is -"  
"Dr. Will Anthros," Truewell said, able to lower her voice from a shout to merely speaking loudly. "He's...very particular about his equipment."  
"Well, we're just glad you could make it this quickly," Agent Tarzi said. "These are Agents Bellamy" - he kinked his head to the agent on his right, a 30-something pale-skinned woman with big sunglasses and a big bun of brown hair - "and Daub" - he turned to the agent on his left, a man with dark, deeply furrowed skin that had to be in his mid-50s at least. "Can I treat you to a cup of joe inside?"  
"We'd prefer to get right to work," Will said, huffing and puffing with the effort of carrying all his gear. "Time's wasting standing around and our agent could be degrading as we speak."  
"Gotcha," Tarzi said. "In that case, if you'll follow Agent Bellamy to the checkpoint, she'll get you fitted for your suits. Agent Taub can help you with the -"  
"I got it," Will cut him off. "Not my first hot zone." He looked to Bellamy. "Lead on."

With Will still humping fifty pounds of lab equipment by himself, they followed Bellamy past the gas station to a large decontamination tent. It was the only equipment the FBI had completely set up so far, and for good reason. Judging by the expandable tunnels on either end and air filtration setup, the tent was meant to be an airlock for entry into a contaminated area.

"Kind of pointless, isn't it?" Will asked.  
"We're fresh out of town-sized plastic bubbles," Tarzi said. "You have a better idea, let's hear it."  
"Simple, don't let **anybody** out until I give the all-clear," Will said. "Just a thought."  
"Suggestion noted," Tarzi said. "Now, if you'll follow us, we can get you suited up -"  
"I know how to put on a hazmat suit, Agent," Will said, stepping around the group and into the tunnel to the airlock room.  
Truewell turned to Tarzi. "He's very good at his job," she said.

Getting them both suited up took about a half hour, with Will saving as much time by skipping them through the safety brief as he wasted berating the field techs for the way they handled the equipment. Truewell gamely went along with it all; getting sealed into a fully-body moon suit to take a stroll through a deadly environment was stressful enough without trying to rein her "partner" in. The only thing close to satisfying about it was hearing his muffled huffing and puffing as they walked out the other side of the airlock to a waiting SUV, Will still insisting on carrying his lab gear all by himself.

"Two minutes to Paradise," the driver told them as she helped them climb into the truck with their suits. "Your supply's good for two hours. I'll expect you back at the drop-off point in one."  
"Thank you, Agent," Truewell said. If Will grumbled something, it was muffled by the suit.

Even with only going 40 mph, they passed the edge of Paradise quickly. Base camp too close to the hot zone, Will complained, but Truewell's attention was on the town itself. There was a certain mercy about the attack having been at night. It meant most people had died in their beds, hopefully asleep, and in any event they weren't going to drive through most of the town. Out of sight, then. As it was, she only caught a few glimpses of people who had been outside when the attack came. One compact car was pulled over on the shoulder of the road, its sole occupant slumped over the steering wheel with his muscles locked too tight to slide off. A delivery truck has gone through a garden fence of an outlying trailer home and only been stopped by the corner of the double-wide on the lot; its cabin was too dark to tell what had happened to the driver. As the SUV slowed down on approach to Paradise Station, Truewell made out another casualty: an old man, collapsed on the dirt path along the road in a puddle of his own vomit - and next to him a dog, curled up as if to rest.

The real blood was reserved for their ultimate destination: the gas station where the incident started. The semi-truck was still next to the station, though it had long since stopped spewing smoke. The man without a name was still on the asphalt, just where the video had shown him falling after getting shot, and the rust-brown pool of dried blood under him had run out into little streaks over the driveway. The driver pulled to a stop at the edge of the parking lot, hung around just long enough for Will to offload his equipment, and then drove away.

"So," Truewell said. "Where do we start?"  
"The bodies," Will said. "Find me whoever's nearby, the more the better. And don't touch anything."

* * *

Wolf Creek, Jaime found, was still thirty minutes beyond Muir Beach. A particularly sharp hairpin turn on the Shoreline Highway put her onto what probably served as a turnout, though with the blacktop continuing on past it and into a wooded valley. There were worn chainlink fences topped with rusty razor wire to either side of the road with a worn metal sign on old concrete posts: "Marin Defense Distribution Depot - NO PUBLIC ROAD - AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT". Frankly, it looked older than her, and just the right mixture of boring and forbidden to signpost a secret government facility, even if this one didn't much bother with hiding. Just past the fence was a corrugated plastic shelter standing on old galvanized pipe, covering a portable shelter containing a bored-looking soldier and a set of TVs, only one of which was tuned to a sports game. Jaime pulled her truck up to the shelter and lowered the window.

"ID please, ma'am," the soldier - _Corporal Paul Bel, US Army, Wolf Creek security detail_ she heard in her head - said as he turned in his chair towards her.  
"Uh." Jaime started to dig in her purse, came up with her driver's license and showed it to Corporal Bel.  
" **Military** ID, ma'am," Bel said. The eye roll wasn't present, but implied.  
"Um, well, I don't have one?" Jaime said. "I'm with...can you call…"  
 _Oh shit you're at the gate already?_ Nathan said, the rattle of his headset ringing in her bionic ear. _Tell him you're with the medical division and stick out your right arm.  
_ "I'm with the medical division?" Jaime echoed, and stuck her bionic arm out the window.  
The soldier grabbed a handheld scanner off the table in front of him, leaned out of the window, and scanned her wrist. A second later, a green light came on. "Thank you, ma'am." He leaned back inside and went back to watching the security cameras.  
"...guess I'm allowed in the clubhouse," Jaime muttered to herself, put the car back into Drive and continued down the road.  
 _Just pull ahead to the parking lot, I'll let Captain Ginsburg know you're here. He'll escort you the rest of the way.  
_ "Ginsburg," Jaime repeated. "Got it."

Half a mile later, the road didn't end so much as it flowed into a sea of asphalt ringed by a double layer of newer-looking chainlink fence. Situated on the asphalt pad were a collection of prefab shelters, some 1980s-looking small buildings, a motor pool of a half-dozen military cargo trucks - _M1120 LHS_ , as the voice in her head insisted - and a large, clear area marked out as a helicopter landing pad. Besides those items, every conceivable bit of space was filled with a drably multi-colored collection of shipping containers, most stacked two high and two side by side, with a few spots where specialized models such as Hi-Cubes, refrigerated units and containerized electrical generators were stood just one high. All in all, Jaime clocked fifty containers easy; a more thorough walkaround may have well pushed the inventory up to three digits. Squeezing in between were a handful of people in fatigues going about whatever their business was; Jaime let their names and ranks as suggested by the voice in her ear wash over her until she picked out Captain Ginsburg's name from the chant. Spotting a small hangar with other civilian-looking vehicles, Jaime pulled up her truck alongside them, got out and made her way across the tarmac to make contact.

Ginsburg turned to her as she approached and stepped forward to meet her. _Captain Antoine Ginsburg, US Air Force (ret)_ , the voice told Jaime. "Get me the count by 1200," he told a soldier hovering next to him.  
"Sir," the soldier answered, clutched his clipboard to his chest and strode off, no doubt to do something very important with one of the containers.  
"Welcome to Wolf Creek," Ginsburg said, extending his hand to shake hers. "Antoine Ginsburg. You find your way here okay?"  
"Yes," Jaime said. "Your secret base isn't that hard to drive to, you know."  
Ginsburg smiled. "It's not," he said. "I'll be honest, though, I couldn't think of a better ice-breaker. Do you mind if we walk and talk?"  
Jaime nodded and started walking past Ginsburg. "Let's get this over with."  
"Okay," Ginsburg said, falling in beside her. "Has anyone actually told you why you were supposed to come here today?"  
"Nope," Jaime replied.  
"Communication's not the strong suit of this project," Ginsburg said. "First official order of business is basic firearms training with Mr. Kim." He looked at her for a reaction. Jaime didn't turn around. The tone of her shoes on the floor was all the reply Ginsburg needed. "There's something else I need to take care of before that, though." He paused. "I'm sorry for what we did to you."  
"But?" Jaime asked.  
That wasn't a response Ginsburg was expecting. "What?"  
"But...it was necessary to save your life?" Jaime asked. "But at least you have bionic super-powers? But now some crazy super-soldier wants you dead, so better get training?" She turned back to glare at Ginsburg. "But **what?** "  
"...the kind of sorry without a but," Ginsburg said. "What happened to you...sucks. I've got friends that...I know people who've been wounded like you were, and no matter how cool the prosthetics are, it still sucks for everyone. And they weren't conscripted afterwards, either." He nodded. "I get it, and I'm sorry. I'm guessing you haven't heard that without someone trying to justify what we're doing, huh."  
Jaime took a deep breath. "No." She paused, and took another one. "Thank you. It does suck."  
Ginsburg nodded. "Well, we'll both get shouted at if we're late."  
"Right," Jaime said. She took a step, then stopped. "I actually have no idea where we're going. I just was...really angry."  
"No worries," Ginsburg said, and stepped around her. "Follow me."

As they came up on the building, he sped up a bit so he could get ahead of her, then got the door and held it open for her. The small building, Jaime noticed, had blacked-out windows, a half dozen soldiers on standby and neither hallways nor rooms; it was all open space, centered around a reinforced concrete pillar that emerged from the ground beneath. An opening in the pillar was just big enough for a passthrough to an elevator cab. Without asking, two of the soldiers approached, scanning both Jaime's arm and Ginsburg's ID another time. Ginsburg was led off to the side after that, where Jaime watched him unload and clear the pistol he carried with him.

"Devices," the soldier next to her said, holding out a clear plastic bin.  
Jaime pulled her cell phone out of her purse and dropped it in the bin.  
"Thank you," the soldier said, as if reading off a phrasebook, then another one keyed his radio.  
"Ginsburg and Sommers coming down," he said. A few seconds later, the elevator doors opened.  
"Thank you," Ginsburg told the soldiers, then ushered Jaime into the waiting elevator cab. They were barely inside when the double doors closed behind them, and with a hiss and a bit of a pop in Jaime's unaugmented ear, the cab pressurized and started its descent.

Stepping out of the surface elevator, Jaime and Ginsburg entered directly into a checkpoint, one soldier behind thick perspex checking Ginsburg's ID, three more waiting with their weapons in reach and a no-kidding ceiling-mounted machinegun tracking their movements. Exiting through a narrow hallway, they came to the vast vertical shaft housing the underground part of the Wolf Creek facility. Passing yet more soldiers on patrol, they made their way along a walkway to the center spire, where the next elevator waited for them. Another short ride and they got off a few sublevels below, following signage all the way to the firing range.

The interior of the "range", then, offered a glimpse of the rock the whole facility was built into. What might have once been a cave the size of a studio apartment had been dug out, expanded and reinforced until it resembled a near-perfect cuboid of concrete and steel. Rails attached to the ceiling transported attached paper targets out to the farther reaches at 25 and 50 meters downrange, while the near side house segmented shooting benches, pegboards with rows of shooting glasses and earmuffs. Waiting for them at the benches was Jae Kim, ponytail neat, black t-shirt tight and utterly focussed on the task of reassembling a pistol.

"Hey," Ginsburg announced their arrival. "Jaime Sommers, Jae Kim."  
"Welcome," Kim said, not looking up from the weapon. "Please find some fitting protection, Miss Sommers. I'll be with you in a moment."  
Jaime looked around before grabbing a set of glasses and ear protection.  
"...I'll see you later, then," Ginsburg said, gave an unacknowledged nod to Kim and then exited the range.

For a few seconds, only the sound of click-clacking metal against metal echoed through the room, then Kim had the pistol back together. Seeming satisfied, he put it down on the bench and approached Jaime. He stopped a few feet away from her, bowing his head slightly.

"Welcome again," he said. "We start with safety. Please, take a seat."

* * *

Ruth Truewell could feel the suit press the breath from her lungs when she squatted down. This was the fifth body close to the gas station she had turned up, and it didn't look much different from the other four: pale and cramped up after a few feet of crawling. She swallowed down a wad of saliva and resisted the urge to wipe the sweat off her brow, because that sweat was caught with her inside the suit - the slick plastic confines smearing the sweat everywhere, from the leather headband that kept the helmet in place, down the back and her legs, even into the boots and gloves. Gingerly, she pushed against the suit and reached into the field kit set onto the ground, from which she retrieved another colored flag. Steadying the pennant between her fingers, she wrote a "5" on it with a felt pen, trying to keep her breathing even as she felt the glove slowly constrain her fingers. The flag went into the ground. Aching fingers clicked on the heavy flashlight - the sun was rising, but still, best to have as much light to see as possible, especially through the fogging faceplate pressed up against her face. Reaching for her chest, she keyed down the transmit button on her radio.

"Specimen Five located," she said. "Male, mid-40s." She paused. "Some abrasions visibly on hands and face. Looks consistent with loss of balance and falling over." No response. She checked the gauge of her air tank attached to her left arm. Thirty minutes until bingo - the red line at which they would have to get out immediately or risk running out of air inside the hot zone. Will still hadn't responded, so she stood up and looked back across the parking lot. Will was standing still, staring down at something at his feet. "Will? Specimen Five looks like the others."

Still no response, and Truewell's heart rate just about doubled. " _Will?_ "  
" **What?** " Will shouted back. "I'm right here, and we're on the radio, no need to shout."  
"I called your name three times," Truewell said, starting to walk his way, the suit constraining her every step. "You were just standing there."  
"Well...I...it was...there was _something_ interesting, and I was studying it," Will shot back.  
"What was it?" Truewell asked.  
"It was...look, it doesn't matter," Will said as Truewell walked up to him. She pointed her flashlight into Will's face. "What the hell - get that out of my face!"  
Will's sunken eyes and pale face said it all. "When's the last time you slept?" Truewell asked.  
"That's not important right now," Will said.  
"You haven't slept since before the crash, haven't you," Truewell said. "Jesus, that was over two days ago now. Have you been sneaking caffeine pills, and…they're wearing off now, aren't they."  
"I said, it's not important," Will said, stepping off towards the gas station attendant's shack.  
"If you fucking cut your suit open and die from whatever did this because you're too tired to cut a sample, I'd say that's pretty damn important," Truewell replied. Will leaned into the shed, looked around, and leaned back out. "Anthros, are you listening to me?"  
"Unfortunately yes, I can still hear you," Will said. "But if I were to sleep, I would be down for twelve hours or more, and this situation requires our immediate attention or who knows what might happen next. Jaime is still in post-op, if she has an issue, she will also require my attention, if not my hands. So, **Agent** Truewell, as I have been saying, it is **not important** right now." Will leaned back into the shed, and swept a finger along the outside of the shed.  
"What are you doing now?" Truewell asked.  
"Take a look at my finger," Will said as he held it up for her. "Is there a black smudge on my fingertip? I can't be sure, because as you have pointed out, I haven't slept in two days."  
Ruth dragged her suit over to him and peered as best she could through the smearing of fog over her mask. "Yes, there is."  
"Then whatever came out of that truck wasn't just smoke," Will said. He turned back and started struggling with the latches on the truck's hood. "Goddamn these gloves!" he shouted.

Ruth grabbed a pry bar from the tool kit; with its help, she had the latches on the other side popped open in a few moments. She trudged back around and shoved it into Will's hands as his sweaty hands and gloves still struggled with his first latch.

"Try this," she said.  
"...thank you," Will said, and got his own latches open.

When the last latch was released, the hood raised up to reveal the massive diesel engine inside. Most of it looked...well, like a dirty old truck engine should, but something shiny and new poked out above the engine on the other side. Will and Truewell both circled around to the other side. What it was wasn't exactly clear, but neither one of them thought that surgical stainless steel and a high pressure spherical tank belonged inside your average truck. The device the tank was attached to was lined with small holes, and was surrounded by a dense smearing of whatever black dust coated the area and Will's finger.

"...what the hell is that?" Truewell asked.  
"Whatever it is, we only have a half-hour to make it safe and take it off so we can find out," Will said.  
"I'll grab the tools," Truewell replied.


	3. Chapter 3

Hey all, and welcome to Chapter 3 of the Rewrite! We're still at it, I swear. 2020 just hasn't been a particularly good year for, well, anything.

* * *

Becca stared down at her notebook, pen in hand. She didn't dare write anything **down** , of course, she wasn't stupid, but that just limited her to her thoughts. _Jaime was gone for less than a day, so what could have happened to her? Why is she working for them, whoever they are? She didn't like the bar, but the job change is so sudden that there's no way it's legit. Jaime didn't mention this Bledsoe guy for no reason, so I guess I need to start with him. Gotta figure out how to look into someone -_

A hand tapped on Becca's shoulder and she bolted upright with a yelp. Kate leaned over next to her and tapped on her shoulder once more and pointed forwards to Mr. Ortiz, who was looking impatiently at Becca. Mr. Ortiz, Becca thought, and the details fell into place. 5th period, AP Biology, the module on -

"Ms. Sommers?" Mr. Ortiz asked, furrowing his brow as he stood over her.

"Yes!" Becca said, leaning forward.

"Well, since you've decided to finally join us, why don't you tell us about nerve signal conduction?" Mr. Ortiz asked, enunciating slowly as he did whenever any of her teachers caught her not looking their way to catch their lips.

"Uh, well," Becca started. "The axon starts out with sodium ions outside and potassium ions inside, which creates a positive charge outside the axon, but when the action potential exceeds the threshold voltage, it triggers the voltage-gated sodium channels to open which takes the difference from negative to positive relative to the outside of the cell, which cascades down the cell." She looked up at Mr. Ortiz and blinked. "Do you want me to keep going?"

Mr. Ortiz stared at Becca a moment longer, then nodded. "No, I think you've got it," he said. He let his look wander the rest of the class. "The rest of you, I'm afraid you'll have to keep paying attention." He turned his head again to what Becca assumed - and her watch confirmed - would be the bell. "Okay, guys, remember to review and come see me if you have any questions about the exam next week, all right?" he finished.

Becca already had her bag over her shoulder and was halfway out the door when Kate caught up with her, jogging around Becca to walk half-facing her as she signed. _You know you're deaf, right?_ Kate signed. _You need to look at the teachers to hear them._

"Uh huh," Becca said.

_You are lucky you are you and just know everything,_ Kate continued.

"...I really don't," Becca replied.

_Yeah, sure,_ Kate signed, but then Becca stopped in the middle of the hall.

After a moment looking around, Becca signed back to Kate, holding her hands close to her chest. _I need to talk with you. Not here._

Kate knew things were serious when Becca started signing back. "Okay…"

Becca took another look around, then walked off, Kate trailing behind her.

Becca navigated the hallways quicker than usual, cutting through crowds she would have ordinarily dodged, and it was all Kate could do to keep up without bumping into anyone. Their route led them first into the library, then to the secluded study area within. Becca sat down at one of the empty desks there and Kate pulled up a chair opposite her.

Becca looked around, yet again. _Something weird is happening,_ she signed. _I don't know who else to talk to._

_You can always talk to me,_ Kate replied. _What is happening?_

Becca finger-spelled _Jaime_. Another student got up from his desk nearby; Becca watched him walk away until he was well out of earshot. _Something happened to her and she won't tell me what it is._ Yet another look around. _Her boyfriend is involved, too._

"Oh shit," Kate hissed.

Becca shook her head. _You can't tell anyone!_ she signed, repeating it for emphasis. _I think someone's watching her. Maybe someone is watching me, too._

"Uhh…" Kate said, looking around. _Are you okay?_

_Okay,_ Becca signed quickly, then dropped back into her chair and sighed. After a few seconds of gathering her thoughts, she sat up straight again. _I'm not making this up. I am scared for her. I don't know what's going on and I don't know what to do._

_I believe you, but -_ Kate started.

_Saying 'but' makes me think you don't really believe me,_ Becca added, rolling her eyes.

_But I don't know what to say!_ Kate said, her signs getting animated enough to shake the table a bit. _You can't tell me what is happening. You don't know what to do._ She got up and sat down next to Becca to give her a hug. Becca first endured the hug, then put her arms around Kate and held on to her for a few seconds.

"Thank you," Becca whispered. "I...need to think about this more."

Kate let Becca go so she could see her face. "If anyone's gonna figure this out, it's you. Just...be careful, okay?"

"I'm always careful," Becca said.

"No, you're not," Kate said, smiling a bit. "That's why I'm saying it."

Becca smiled despite herself. _This time, though,_ she signed.

With a final clap on Becca's shoulder, Kate got up and walked away. She'd be alone in the cafeteria for lunch, because Becca's look had already returned to the empty page of her notebook. _Organized, I gotta get organized. Can't figure this out without getting organized._ She stared at the page a moment longer, then started drawing. First, a horizontal line across the page, then a line at the left end labeled "Sunday - Jaime leaves on date", then halfway down, another line: "Monday afternoon - Jaime returns, freaks out, collapses, Will takes her away". Right after that, another two lines: "Early Monday night - Jaime comes back, and has a fight with Will, goes to his apartment", and "Late Monday Night - Jaime comes back". The gaps between Sunday and Monday and Monday afternoon and night got a circle and a label of their own - "What happened in here?" - and Becca started adding more around that. "Cameras?", "Asking questions?", "Asking Jaime?", and each got crossed out.

Becca sighed, and turned the page over, putting Jaime's name dead center of the page. Off that, she drew two lines and added names at the end of each: "Will" and "Jonas Bledsoe(?)". A moment's thought later added two lines from each to a common phrase: "Promethean Dynamics", the name of the company Will said he worked for, and then a big circle looped a few times around that name and Bledsoe. _There we go,_ Becca thought with a smile - and then tore the page out of her notebook and crumpled it up in her hand. It was a short walk out the door to the administration building, and after a nod and a smile to Erin at the front desk, Becca rounded the desk and slid the page into the shredder, watching the paper descend into its teeth. _Time to go to work_ , she thought.

* * *

If Truewell hadn't radioed ahead to warn the FBI agents guarding the makeshift base, a van approaching at that speed from Paradise (or any other direction) would have been lit up in a hailstorm of gunfire. Instead they cleared well away from the dust cloud kicked up by the speeding van, as Truewell practically rolled the van over, spinning the rear end around to back into the decontamination sprayers. Will was out of the van before the water hit, stomping towards the back while the decontamination crew hosed down the whole vehicle. Truewell was right behind him, but nice enough to close the door so the interior wouldn't get soaked.

"Make a hole!" Will shouted, freezing the incoming FBI support team in their steps. With a rough yank, he threw open the van's trunk and half-crawled inside. When he backed out again, he was dragging with him an aluminum case hastily wrapped in "BIOHAZARD" warning tape. Truewell appeared at his side, helping to heft the case out of the vehicle. The decon hoses were still spraying at them both, drenching them and the sample case with clear water. Neither of them cared.

The radio clicked with Agent Tarzi's voice. "Talk to me, Doctors," he said.

Truewell glanced up. Through the water running off her suit's visor, she could just make out a hazy figure maybe thirty meters away, by the main building, waving an arm towards her. "We have a device," she said, only to herself at first; then she clicked the transmit button on her radio and repeated it for everyone to hear.

"MAKE A HOLE!" Will shouted onto the same channel. "Everybody back off! Clear the tents! This is now a hot zone."

After that, the channel was filled with his breathing and cussing. He hadn't keyed off the transmit and whatever anyone else was trying to say, it wasn't getting through. The water finally eased off them as they gained distance from the van, rushing towards whatever the nearest plastic tent was. In front of them, people grabbed what they could and ran for it. One brave agent in an isolation suit stayed, holding the entrance of the tent open for the two dripping wet Berkut operatives and their deadly cargo. With a final grunt of effort, they carried the case inside and heaved it onto a table. After breaking the tape seal of the container, they gingerly lifted the device into the transfer chamber of the waiting glove box and sealed it inside. Behind them, the entrance to the tent was zipped closed. The agent didn't leave yet, though; he tapped on the thick, semi-clear plastic, getting Truewell's attention. He flailed a hand towards the side of his helmet, then tapped the radio attached to his chest harness under the suit.

Truewell nodded, checked her own gear, then looked over to Will. "Radio!" she said. Not getting a response, she put a hand on Will's shoulder. Will flinched away, brushing her hand away, but he did look at her. "Radio!" Truewell said, loud enough to carry through the helmets and the adrenaline. "You're blocking the channel!"

Will nodded, fumbled with the transmit until he got it turned off. Then he finally took a few, deep breaths and put both hands on the bench, leaning over to steady himself. He started to slump and lean to one side, but then caught himself and wobbled back upright. "You need to...you should get out," he said.

"Excuse you, I'm not going anywhere," Truewell shouted back, not needing the radio to communicate that message.

"Doctors Truewell, Anthros, come in," Tarzi's voice sounded via radio. "Doctors, do you copy?"

Truewell glared at Will, then keyed her radio. "Truewell here, good copy, go ahead, Agent Tarzi."

"Doctor Truewell," Tarzi said, "I understand you brought back an UXO? I have everyone clearing a fifty meter perimeter around your location right now. I need to know what happens next."

"It's not a UXO, you paper pusher," Will shouted inside his suit.

Truewell keyed the radio again. "Cannot confirm whether it is explosive, Agent Tarzi," she said. "Doctor Anthros believes it is primarily a chemical hazard."

"Copy your assessment," Tarzi said. "You'll understand if we don't take chances with that. What's the plan?"

"The plan is -" Will started to say as he pushed himself off the counter before Truewell keyed down on his microphone for him. "The plan is, we take this thing apart, see how it works, and then figure out where it came from."

"...copy that," Tarzi radioed. Will felt a hiss of fresh air in his suit as Truewell hooked them both to the tent's air supply. Nice and cool. He bumped his hand against the suit's visor in an attempt to wipe the sweat off his brow.

"It's got a few screws and accessible panels for us to get into," Truewell said. "We **could** use someone with EOD experience to open it up."

"There are too many people in this tent already," Will protested.

Truewell got off the radio and stepped closer to Will. "Hold out your hands," she said.

"What on Earth for?" Will shot back.

"Personal favor to me," Truewell said. "Hold out your hands. Now."

Will grunted, then turned to her and held out his hands. It didn't take even two seconds before their quiver was noticeable even through the thick gloves of the suit.

"You're done touching things that might kill us," Truewell said.

Will grunted again, but averted his eyes, signalling his surrender. "Fine," he said. "Let's gamble another life. Tick that checkbox."

"Agent Tarzi," Truewell radioed. "How about that EOD assistance?"

"Stand by," Tarzi radioed back. After a few seconds, he continued. "To be clear, Doctor Truewell, if I'm sending one of my agents, you're going to listen to them. They say it can't be opened, we're detonating it. No buts."

"You can't **do** that -" Will shouted, but was cut off by Truewell.

"Sounds fair to me," Truewell said. "They didn't expect that this would fall into our hands, so I'm not expecting anything, but better to be safe than sorry."

"Good," Tarzi replied. "Glad to hear we're all on the same page now. I have Agent Jackson suiting up, she'll be with you in ten. Don't disturb the device without her."  
"We won't," Truewell said, keeping her hand on Will's shoulder to both keep him away from the glove box and upright.

It made a sort of sense for the FBI's on-hand trained bomb technician to be petite, and her deft hands made quick but careful work of the inspection of the outside of the device. "No visible exterior triggers, no obvious internal masses," Agent Jackson said. "Starting with the screws holding the external access plate now." Truewell had to hold Will back from walking up behind her to demand she go faster, but the three screws pinning the plate closed came out easily enough. The round aluminum plate on the bottom of the device was carefully prised up and open, revealing a white silicone rubber gasket on the inside. "Looks like the device was sealed against some kind of unknown agent."

Will tugged against Truewell's hand again. "Are there multiple chambers?"

"Yes, sir, three," Jackson said. "Two larger and one smaller. The larger two have some kind of oily black residue, and the smaller one a much lighter weight and clear residue, like an alcohol."

"Binary precursor containers and a complex organic catalyst to kick-start folding," Will muttered.

"Agent Jackson, it's vital you get multiple swabs of those chambers immediately," Truewell called out.

"Copy that, ma'am," Jackson said, and ran a number of swabs through all three chambers. "Other than that, I don't see anything else inside. The top of the device looks like a sprayer head, no obvious threat. I'm calling this device clean."

"All right," Will said, rising to his feet. "Excellent, very good work, Agent Jackson, thank you."

Jackson stood aside. "Fine with me, Sir, I'm getting decon'd and getting the fuck out of here."

"Smart move," Truewell said as she got out of Jackson's way. "What do you see, Will?"

"There's a," Will began. His arm rose again to his helmet, but this time he remembered that he couldn't touch his forehead, so he put the hand on the counter and leaned his weight onto it. "There's a nebulizer there, did we get a...did we get swabs from the top and the side, you know, we should be looking for the port sizes, maybe that'll give us a clue to the agent's viscosity...I think."

"That'll help ID the agent, but we need to know who made this more, Will," Truewell said, opening up the medical kit in the tent, and pulling out a packaged syringe and one of the vials of drugs inside.

"Yes," Will said.

Will stared at the device for a moment longer, then grabbed it with both hands and banged it against a tool stand in the glove box as hard as he could. Before Truewell could pull him back, he had given it three good cracks, and a chunk of it broke off with a loud _ping_.

"What the hell are you **doing?** " Truewell shouted, holding Will back.

"It's safe!" Will shouted. "Agent...Agent Jackson said it was safe, and I couldn't see a better way to get the protective housing off of the nebulizer control circuits!" He managed to wrestle his way free of Truewell and staggered back towards the glove box. "And see? Do you see, Agent Truewell?" Truewell walked over and peered through the glove box window. Indeed, Will had managed to break off the aluminum box covering the electronics at the top of the device, and inside was a small circuit board with a couple of integrated circuits and small components. "I bet some of those are even traceable," Will said.

"Good work, Will," Truewell said. "Let's go outside and get out of these suits for a minute, hmm?"

"Yes," Will breathed. "Yes, we...we know where to look now," he continued.

There was no further protest as he followed Truewell out of the tent. Outside, they and Agent Jackson stood still and raised their arms for another decontamination hosedown. Only after a thorough spraying and an all clear handsign from the decon team did Truewell finally reach for the duct tape over the collar seal of her helmet. Never before had dusty desert air smelled this good. With her own head free, she helped Will unbuckle his gear and climb out of the suit. He was wearing more sweat than fabric at this point and while he started talking and gesticulating with his left hand, his right hung at his side, quivering.

"Issue one, chemicals," Will started reeling off. "I need to get my test kit in there. We can have the swabs done in twenty, maybe thirty minutes."

"Sounds good," Truewell said. She reached into one of the cargo pockets on her suit, producing the packaged syringe and vial. "That's all automated in your minilab, yes?"

"Of course it is!" Will scoffed. "Do you think I'm bringing beakers and bunsen burners out here? Issue two, materials, we need -" He turned to Agent Jackson. "Jackson!" he shouted. "We need those screws traced! You FBI people have databases for that, yes?"

Jackson looked just past Will to watch Truewell uncap the syringe, then over to the side, where Agent Tarzi made his approach, now kitted out in his own isolation suit. "We do, Doctor Anthros," Tarzi said. "Is there anything else we can help you with?"

"Yes!" Anthros said, pausing again after that. "There's a...there's another thing. Right. Issue three, we have to take another look at the recovered bodies for acetylcholine levels, and any...any abnormal transition metals in the neurons. I don't think this was a chemical weapon, at least, not like you think of them."

"Anything else, Will?" Truewell asked, drawing a small dose from the vial.

"...coffee would be nice," Will said.

"I have something better," Truewell said, and jammed the needle into the meat of Will Anthros' ass before depressing the plunger. "You need sleep, not caffeine, Will."

Will barely flinched, but he did tense up. "You fucking **bitch** ," he hissed. Then the rest of his breath escaped and he bent over, swayed a bit under her steadying hands. "What'd you...what was in that?" he asked.

"Ketamine," Truewell said. "Not even enough of a dose to knock you out. Just enough to make you sleepy."

"Ket," Will said. "Damn." He took another breath. "...that's what I would use."

"You'll wake up in probably...twelve hours or so," Truewell said. "You could barely stand up, Will. You need to sleep."

"I need to," Will said. "I have...I'm the...I can figure this out."

"Not when you're barely coherent, and you know it," Truewell said.

"...yes," Will said, and slumped over into Truewell's arms.

"A little bit of help here?" Truewell said.

Agent Jackson walked over and positioned herself under Will's other shoulder as both she and Truewell carried the now-unconscious Berkut scientist into a nearby field tent and laid him down on one of the cots inside.

"So, all the stuff he said?" Truewell said to Agent Tarzi. "Get on it. I'll handle the field lab, you handle the parts and autopsies."

"With respect, Ma'am," Jackson said, "you DARPA people are out of your fucking minds. Where'd you find this guy?"

"Wouldn't be here without him," Truewell commented.

* * *

Jaime exited the shooting range with a light growl in her stomach and what felt like a second, invisible layer of oily gunshot residue underneath the one she had just washed off her hands. Nobody was waiting for her outside, giving her a chance to wander closer to the railing of the circular walkway and take in the atmosphere of the central vertical shaft spanning Wolf Creek's sublevels. The air was moving throughout, pushing down from above. It smelled like nothing. There were echoes of footsteps throughout, though she knew - how did she know? - that she was alone with Jae Kim on this level. She leaned onto the railing and tried to take in the vast expanse of muted fluorescent lighting and concrete. This, she had been told, was supposed to be her future. It didn't look very bright.

She heard the soft ping of the central elevator arriving at the level and turned around to see Captain Ginsburg exit it. He looked a bit surprised to see her out and about as he jogged to join up with her.

"Hey," Ginsburg said. "Sorry about the wait. Are you all wrapped up with Jae in there?"

"Yes," Jaime said. "All done."  
"Great," Ginsburg said, putting on a smile. "Tell me all about it over lunch?"

"Not much to talk about," Jaime said. "One of the bouncers at the bar took me shooting when I first started working there, said it was 'so I know how to take care of myself', but I think it was just his go-to move. Guns aren't complicated to use, that's part of the problem."

Ginsburg nodded to that. "Not sure that attitude's gonna make a lot of friends around here," he said.

"Not sure implanting robot limbs in my body and forcing me to be a killer is a good way to do that, either," Jaime replied back, an edge filling her voice.

Ginsburg's mouth hung open for a moment. His next move was for his eyes to stop meeting Jaime's. "...damn," he managed. He turned further, now looking squarely away from her as he took a few breaths to think over his next words. Then he pulled his shoulders out of their slump and turned back to look at her. "Have they told you about Sara?" he asked.

"I've heard this speech from Bledsoe, from Will, and even from Kim," Jaime said.

"And I bet they have their story straight, too," Ginsburg said. "They're trying to make it easier for you to take her down. What they probably left out is that we did her dirty just like you...worse, even. Yeah, she's dangerous. Killed a lot of people I knew. But maybe we all had it coming." He paused. "Or I can shut up about it. Your choice."

Jaime's bartending experience taught her a lot about knowing when someone has something to say. "Go ahead," she nodded.

Ginsburg did not just 'go ahead'. He turned his head from side to side, looking for anyone who might be listening in on their conversation.

"There's no one here," Jaime said.

"How do you know?" Ginsburg said, looking around behind her.

"I...think it's the bionic ear?" Jaime said. "I can't hear anyone but us."

"...that's...handy," Ginsburg said. "Okay. So, if you heard the story, you've probably seen the file. Here's the million dollar question: why her and not anyone else?" He lowered his voice. "As far as I know, the candidate had to be three things: they had to be 'compatible', whatever the hell that means. There couldn't be any other treatment options, that's the only way SecDef would sign off on it - people who were gonna be dead without the bionics. And one more thing, they had to be **expendable**. You know what that means? That means some **motherfucker** in the DoD looked at a few dozen files off our wishlist and put a dot on the people they thought wouldn't be missed. Once that was decided, all we had to do was wait for one of our chosen to get almost killed and come scoop them up." He paused. "So, here's Sara Corvus. Already sold down the river before she ever met us. Doesn't have anybody to give a shit about her. And then it all goes down, she's blown up, she's flown in, she's butchered. She hasn't even been awake for an hour before she's taken a hostage and I'm staring at her over the sights of my rifle, wondering if I should pull the trigger on this scared woman who's holding a scalpel to one of my guys and shouting for someone to explain what we've done to her." He paused again. "I didn't know Sara Corvus before she got here, but I know what this place did to her. It turned her into a weapon and a monster. It does that to everyone."

"Everyone?" Jaime asked.

Ginsburg didn't reply to that. "But that doesn't change that she's coming for you. Sympathy doesn't matter if it's on your headstone."

"Sounds like everyone's got their own good reasons to shoot first and not bother with the questions at all," Jaime replied. "Also sounds like no one's bothered to just talk to her like a human being instead of a malfunctioning murder machine."

Ginsburg gave her a curt nod. "I'd like to say we tried," he said. "Right now, our orders are shoot to kill on sight. I can't imagine she'd do less for any of us." He averted his eyes. "You're going to try to talk to her, aren't you?"

"It seems like someone should," Jaime said

It took Ginsburg a second to show a reaction to that, a curt nod with his eyes fixed on hers. The elevator dinged open behind her. "I hope that works," he said, then turned toward the elevator cab.


End file.
